They would ask me what actors I saw in the roles. I would tell them, and they’d say “Oh that’s interesting.” And that would be the end of it.
--Elmore Leonard, in 2000, on the extent of his input for Hollywood's adaptation of his novels

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

J.T. Ellison's "What Lies Behind"

J.T. Ellison is the New York Times bestselling author of thirteen critically acclaimed novels, including What Lies Behind, When Shadows Fall and All the Pretty Girls, and is the co-author of the A Brit in the FBI series with bestselling author Catherine Coulter. Her work has been published in more than twenty countries. Her novel The Cold Room won the ITW Thriller Award for Best Paperback Original, and Where All The Dead Lie was a RITA® Nominee for Best Romantic Suspense. She lives in Nashville with her husband and twin kittens, where she enjoys fine wine and good notebooks.

Here Ellison shares some ideas for casting an adaptation of What Lies Behind:

When I first developed Dr. Samantha Owens as a character, I always told people she looked like Natalie Portman. Before I spun her off into her own series, she was a character in my Taylor Jackson novels, so we’re talking almost a decade of mentally imagining this woman.

While I was writing What Lies Behind, I realized I was wrong. She doesn’t look like Natalie Portman. She looks like… Samantha. She has become so much her own person that I don’t need the prompt of a face to make her come alive.

It was an exciting revelation. So many of my characters have their own worlds, their own lives, and it’s easy to find people I think would be good to play them. I even have Pinterest boards with actors I think would work for each high-profile character in my books. Looking over those boards now, I find myself questioning each “look.” Xander isn’t nearly as similar to Josh Hartnett anymore, just as Sam has morphed away from Portman, though she still has that delicacy. Even Fletcher isn’t quite Robert Downey, Jr. anymore (though I am not going to kick him out of bed for eating crackers, if you catch my drift.)

It’s interesting to me to see these changes happening as the characters become their own people. I’d love to hear who you think would be good in the roles of Sam, Xander and Fletcher!

“Compared to a novel, a film is like an economy pizza where there are no olives, no ham, no anchovies, no mushrooms, and all you’ve got is the dough.”
--Louis de Bernières, author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin